[Ansteorra-archery] Combat Archery Question

[Paul Haines]

While I haven't participated in combat archery (yet), I have been reading
this list for some time.  Is it me, or did this air of unrest between
archers and fighters not also come up after the last Gulf War?  I've slept a
few times since Gulf War XI, but I think I recall similar complaints then
that I'm hearing again now; that fighters are complaining about archers, and
that "the man" is trying to impose more restrictions on archers to the point
of making the activity obsolete.  All these discussions have brought to my
mind a couple questions.

1.  If fighters have a problem with getting picked off by an archer in a
melee, and then feel the need to complain about it, why don't they just
avoid melees with archers, and let those that don't mind archers, play on?
Or better yet, why don't the fighters put some more encourangement to get
more archers to the field on their side to help take out the archers of the
enemy's force?

2.  From what little I've seen of combat archery, where archers stand behind
melee units and intermingle in melees....Is that how archers were
historically used in field battles?  From what I've understood of history,
archers were a backfield unit, behind the infantry, used to thin out the
ranks of the opposing infantry as they approached.  Then when melee between
infantry broke out, the archers were halted to prevent friendly fire.  Then
if the enemy infantry broke through the ranks, the archers could pick off
those approaching infantry, until they were threatened, at which point they
ran for the hills.